The Decade Started in Hippie Clothes

Patchwork, crochet, knitting, embroidery. Quilting, felting, dyeing, beading, smocking, leather craft and hand-painted fabric. All of it came off the craft fairs, because seventies fashion started as a continuation of late-sixties hippie style.

On men, that arrived as denim covered in patches and embroidery, leather worked by hand, waistcoats, and fabric that showed the hand that made it.

The tailored early-seventies figure and the hippie wardrobe ran side by side. The belt is where they meet. Both put a wide one with a big buckle at the centre of the body.

Wide Belts and Short Jackets, 1970 to 1973

Shirts and trousers were tighter than they had ever been, and everything in the early-seventies wardrobe works toward a long thin figure: turtlenecks, slim shirts, narrow shoulders. Daniel Milford-Cottam:

Wide belts with large buckles focused the eye on the centre of the torso, making broader bodies appear slimmer. Over the top, a sleeveless waistcoat or jerkin, a classic single-breasted sports jacket in tweed, denim, or corduroy, or a blouson jacket in leather or synthetic fabric was usually worn.

The belt goes on first and does the work. Whatever goes over it stops at the hip. Anything longer would cover the buckle that is holding the eye.

A seventies flare is a narrow leg that opens late. Tight through the thigh, released below the knee, and nothing like a trouser cut wide from the hip down.

Put a hand round the leg above the knee. The cloth should be close there, with the flare starting below your hand.

Sideburns, Moustaches, and Hair on the Collar

Sideburns down the cheek and widening as they go, a heavy moustache, hair past the collar on men who had never worn it that way, including men in offices.

Full beards were ordinary. Later in the decade the feathered cut arrived, layered and lifted away from the face and set with a dryer.

A long collar and a wide lapel have to clear hair sitting on the shoulder. Both went long for that reason.

Grow the sideburns wider at the bottom than the top, with the hair long enough to sit on the collar.

Kipper Ties and the Collars That Held Them

Fourteen ties in the V&A carry both a recorded width and a date inside the decade. They run from four inches to five and a quarter, with the middle of that range sitting at a blade a spread hand cannot cover. Fourteen ties is a sample of what a museum chose to keep, not a survey of what hung in wardrobes, but the range matches the period name for them. T.341-1984 is the widest of them, a double-ended Ascot kipper in shot silk. The museum uses the period name, kipper tie.

A blade that wide ties a knot that a normal collar cannot hold, so the collar went high-banded and wide-spread with long points, and the lapel widened behind it. Michael Fish cut the first kipper while he was still at Turnbull & Asser on Jermyn Street, and the name is a pun on his own. By 1966 he had opened Mr Fish at 17 Clifford Street in Mayfair, and for the next few years that shop was where the widening happened. The V&A holds one of his ties from 1966 or 1967, four and three-quarter inches across.

One reconstruction gives the clearest measurements in the collection. T.940-1994 is silver-grey wool cut to a 1975 design, made by Keith Mallinson in 1994 for the museum's Streetstyle exhibition, and it belongs to a Northern Soul outfit worn by Peter Davies to Samantha's Soul Club in Sheffield. It records what a dancer wanted, not what a shop was selling, and nothing else here leans on it for the mainstream silhouette. The V&A records a waist of 800mm, an inside leg of 800mm, and a hem circumference of 900mm on each leg. A flare cut that hard has to start from a fixed point above the hip.

Shirts carried pattern by default. Eagle Shirtmakers cut a synthetic shirt in 1975 that the Met now holds, the American mass-market end of the same garment. Of the twenty shirts the V&A kept, most are striped or printed: T.119-1991 in striped blue silk, T.505-1995 in pink cotton with a white floral print, T.365-1985 in warp-knitted cotton with a vertical zig-zag.

The order runs outward from the tie, and each piece is sized by the one before it.

Double-Breasted and Narrow-Legged, 1977 to 1979

Towards the end of the decade, double-breasted suits with wider shoulders and narrower legs and lapels began to come into fashion.

The width moves from the ends of the limbs to the top of the body, so everything eighties tailoring is remembered for starts here, two or three years early. Anything cut to this end of the decade is double-breasted with a leg running straight from knee to hem. Punk arrives in the same window and pulls the same way, tight black trousers and leather jackets and boots, cut narrow at exactly the moment mainstream tailoring was narrowing.

Shaft, Super Fly, and Black Style

Shaft opened in 1971 with Richard Roundtree walking out of a New York subway in a brown leather trench, wide lapels and epaulettes on the shoulders. Super Fly followed in 1972, Ron O'Neal as Youngblood Priest in sharply cut suits, wide-brimmed hats and fur-trimmed coats, with a Curtis Mayfield soundtrack that outsold the film.

Both come out of Black cinema. The wide lapel, the long collar point, the platform, the full-length coat and the hat all ran through Black style before the high street sold them to everyone else.

Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes and Sly Stone were dressing for television as much as for the room.

The V&A entry for the Northern Soul trousers says it plainly: American soul musicians found a warm welcome in England in the 1970s, particularly in Wigan, Wolverhampton and Nottingham. Northern soul was English kids dancing to records made by Black Americans, in clothes cut for the dancing.

The afro was worn at volume and shaped to hold that volume, and through the decade it carried a political reading as much as a stylistic one.

Bowie's Stage Clothes

S.283:1 to 8-2024 is the three-piece Freddie Burretti made for the Life on Mars? video in 1972: turquoise blue, single-breasted, wide lapels, worn with a navy and white pinstripe shirt.

S.288-2024, Burretti again in 1972, dresses Bowie as Ziggy Stardust in a mauve and silver jacket with purple lapels, purple trousers, purple waistcoat, pink shirt and purple braces.

S.166:1 to 3-2020 is a red lamé jacket with a black lamé collar and pocket flaps, and matching red lamé trousers.

A 1973 Ziggy costume is a two-piece metallic zip-up in green, red and gold vertical stripes with exaggerated shoulders. These are four of around fifty pieces of seventies stage clothing in the museum, most of it Bowie's.

The shoulders on that last one are exaggerated, in 1973, four or five years before mainstream tailoring went anywhere near it. Satin, lamé, platform boots, makeup and clothing borrowed openly from womenswear ran through the rest of it, with Marc Bolan and Bowie as the reference points, and what they wore on stage filtered down to the street as glitter and satin shirts and higher heels.

A satin shirt under a plain jacket works, because only one thing in the outfit is catching light.

Platform Shoes

T.78&A-1983 is a pair of men's platform shoes in iridescent snakeskin patchwork, designed by Terry de Havilland in 1972. The heel runs close to three inches, with another finger's width of sole under the whole foot, and a blunt square toe.

Set it against T.346&A-1979, Moya Bowler's black patent loafers from a few years earlier, which fit the same foot with no platform at all and stand the same man three and a half centimetres lower. The platform belongs to the wide years for a reason that starts at the knee: a leg opening that wide falls a long way, it has to clear the sole before it reaches the ground, and the trouser was therefore cut long and broke low over a tall shoe. A mid-decade leg needs the sole under it. A 1978 leg has nothing above it wide enough to carry a platform.

Two more pairs are in the collection: T.51:1,2-1994 in black leather with polyurethane soles, T.57:1,2-1994 in black patent with purple hearts on the uppers.

Saturday Night Fever and the White Suit

Saturday Night Fever, released in December 1977, put John Travolta in a white three-piece with a black shirt worn open at the neck. That combination became shorthand for the decade.

Nineteen seventy-seven is the reversal year, so the white suit sits exactly where the lapel had started coming in and the shoulder had started going out. People take it for the mid-decade silhouette when it comes from the far end.

What disco added on top of the tailoring was surface: satin and metallic finishes on shirts, and a shoe that could take a night of dancing while still adding height.

Three Suits, 1971 to 1979

The collection holds complete suits from across the decade, and three of them sit at the three points on it.

1971, turquoise, tight

T.430, 431-1993, a Mr Fish design from 1971, is a turquoise single-breasted jacket with a high three-button front and creased trousers.

Start with the button stance. Three buttons set high close the chest and shorten the lapel.

The lining is a psychedelic print. Tone-on-tone contrast binding runs round the collar, the lapels and the square pocket flaps, outlining the edge of every panel against the cloth.

Tommy Nutter cut T.152:1 to 3-1996 in the same year, Glenurquhart check wool with a waistcoat, which puts the same silhouette in Savile Row cloth.

1972, navy pinstripe, wide

T.72 to C-1983, made by John Stephen around 1972, is navy pinstripe wool, double-breasted, with wide peak lapels and flared trousers, and the shirt and silk tie it was worn with survive alongside it. Stephen built Carnaby Street. By 1972 this was what he sold there.

The double-breasted front turns up early here. It usually gets filed under the late-decade reversal, and this one is from 1972 with the lapels at full width and the leg still flaring.

Conservative clothing took the period cut as readily as party clothing did.

The American end, mid-decade

Bill Blass cut a suit around 1975 in wool and synthetic, and an ensemble the same year in cotton, wool and silk. Both came to the Met through the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection.

Ralph Lauren's seventies suit is plain wool. Johnny Carson's, from the middle of the decade, is synthetic fibre, worn by a man who was on television five nights a week.

1975 to 1979, beige, plain

T.760:1, 2-1995 is a Bruno Piattelli jacket and trousers in beige wool, dated across the second half of the decade.

Nothing else is recorded about it. The binding, the contrast, the square flaps and the psychedelic linings of 1971 have all gone.

Denim, and the Rest of the Casual Wardrobe

Five things a man wore when he was out of a suit.

Jeans

Then: cut to the same flare pattern as the trousers of a suit. Now: straight from knee to hem on almost everything sold, though coated bootcut jeans at $79 still cut the leg to open below the knee.

Denim jackets

Then: worn with the jeans. Denim also went formal, including a denim leisure suit from 1973 cut to the same shirt-jacket pattern as its polyester cousins. Now: the trucker survives unchanged.

T-shirts

Then: underwear or a plain top until the back half of the decade, when screen printing put band names, slogans and images on the chest. Now: the print is the default.

Knitwear

Then: turtlenecks the full decade, worn alone and under jackets, plus cardigans and heavy hand-knits, with sweaters carrying bold geometrics and abstract prints. Now: the turtleneck comes back every few winters, though the patterns have not.

Corduroy

Then: listed alongside tweed and denim for early-seventies sports jackets, and used through the decade for suits, jackets and trousers alike. Now: mostly trousers, mostly narrow-wale.

Collared knit shirts and denim jackets are described as the everyday alternative to the more formal styles of the early seventies.

Five Flares, Five Different Fabrics

T.368-1985 is rayon crêpe. T.20:2-2002 is lurex. T.662-1993 is cotton corduroy. T.56-1994 is worsted. T.49-1994 is brown leather.

Five pairs of flared or wide-legged trousers in the V&A collection, no two of them sharing a fibre, all cut to the same leg.

The Met's Costume Institute holds the American end of the same shape: a Bill Blass suit from around 1975 in wool and synthetic, and a pair of Brass Boot oxfords from the same year. Both came in through the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection. Five is a small number, and the point holds only as far as it goes: within one museum's holdings, the cut is what repeats and the cloth is what varies.

Other decades ran the opposite way, with grunge tied to flannel and punk to leather. Here the proportions carried the period.

Sportswear Became Street Clothes

Tennis and golf clothes had long been acceptable casual wear, but it wasn't until the 1970s that more athletic-looking styles were seen as everyday fashion.

The FIT timeline dates the shift to these years. What arrived came off the running track, not the court. Bob Marley was wearing tracksuits and football shirts on stage while it was still new.

This belongs to the back half of the decade, arriving alongside the narrowing leg.

Men and Women Bought the Same Clothes

Fashion had reached a new level of gender equality, particularly in informal wear.

Milford-Cottam, writing about the seventies. The FIT timeline records what that meant on the shop floor: tight t-shirts, jeans, shirts and sweaters bought by both, with some men going to the women's rail outright. Retailers played to it, and Penneys ran a line advertised as his-and-hers styles.

Because seventies knitwear, t-shirts and shirts were cut close enough on both sides, a women's vintage piece will often fit a man better than the men's equivalent in the same nominal size. Worth knowing before you walk past half a rail.

Chains, Glasses, and the Open Neck

Because a tie knot fills the neck of a shirt, opening the shirt leaves a gap where the knot had been, and a chain or a medallion is what went into it.

Sunglasses ran large through the same years, heavy in the frame, with tinted lenses.

The wide belt with the large buckle changes the shape of a man, so it held right through the early and middle years.

The Leisure Suit and the Safari Suit

America's contribution was the leisure suit, and it travelled through the catalogues. Jerry Rosengarten designed it at Lee Jeans in 1970 to give a salesman something to hang a new double-knit polyester on, and that origin explains everything about how it looks. Because the garment exists to show off the fabric, it is built almost entirely from flat panels the knit can hold a shape in: open front, large collar and lapels, patch pockets, contrast top-stitching.

A shirt-style jacket with matching trousers, most often polyester. Lee sold it as LEEsures. It was marketed to men as a comfortable business suit.

As leisure suits were often perceived as being poorer quality, cheaper and made in obviously synthetic fabrics, they became considered somewhat vulgar, or at best comical.

Safari suits used the same construction and carried a better reputation, and the difference was mostly who wore it and what it was cut from: belted, light-coloured, large patch pockets, long or short sleeves, worn with trousers or shorts, and worn often enough by Roger Moore's Bond that fans started calling him the king of safari jackets.

The Met holds a David Stevens leisure suit from 1977 to 1979, and the surprise is the fibre: cotton, not polyester. By the end of the run the shape had outlived the fabric that produced it.

Two safari suits sit in the V&A collection, both around 1970: T.258&A-1978 in jacket and trousers, and T.512:1,2-1995 in beige cotton.

If you want this shape, take the safari version in cotton or linen. Same shirt-jacket construction, same patch pockets.

Colour by Season

A yellow wool suit designed by Victor Herbert in 1974 is the kind of thing everyone pictures when the decade comes up. Around it sit pinstripes, worsteds, mohair and Glenurquhart check.

Colour ran by season more than by fashion. Pastel and cream through the summer, then brown and blue and grey once the weather turned. A winter business suit was brown. The decade is remembered through its evenings.

Buy on the same principle: cream or a pastel for summer, something in the brown-to-grey range for the rest of the year, with the cut doing the dating.

Velvet Collars on Daytime Suits

Two suits from 1972 put velvet on a business cloth. T.243:1 to 4-2001, by Lord and Stuart, is brown slubbed wool with a velvet collar and velvet cuffs. The museum kept the pink cotton shirt and brown grosgrain bow tie that were worn with it, so what survives is the combination a man actually put on.

T.564 to 566-1993, designed by Hardy Amies for Hepworth's around 1972, is a grey worsted three-piece with black velvet half-cuffs and collar, velvet-covered buttons on jacket and waistcoat, and velvet flaps and welts on the pockets. The jacket is a long-line drape and the trousers are creased and narrow. The Edwardian revival, not the flare, and it ran alongside everything else in the decade.

T.705 to C-1974, designed by Michael Fish in 1970, takes more than one part. The jacket fastens with corded silk and a jet-beaded tassel, both of which come off a smoking jacket or a dressing gown. Down each leg runs the broad black satin stripe of a dinner suit. The shirt is built like a dress shirt, boned high collar and pleated front, though it is made in black synthetic crepe and closes with a zip up the side. Under all of it the cloth is a blue, black and silver mix of wool, synthetic and lurex, jacquard-woven with a linear fuchsia-like flower. It was worn with an enamel fish brooch.

Formal dress was being stripped for parts, and the parts ended up on clothes worn in daylight.

A velvet collar on a plain wool jacket reads as period.

How to Wear It Now

The usual advice is to wear one seventies element and keep everything else modern. That gets it half right and misses why the other half fails: a flared trouser under a slim modern jacket has nothing above it cut to the same generosity, so it reads as an accident. Going the other way and wearing five links at full seventies scale puts more volume on a man than anyone has carried since.

Take a pair from the chain, scale them to each other, and leave the rest of the outfit plainly modern. Which pair depends on the year: in 1971 the belt sets everything, by the middle years the tie knot does, and by 1978 it is the shoulder.

Collar and lapel

A shirt with a wide collar under a jacket whose lapel is broad enough to frame it, and nothing else period at all. Straight trousers, plain shoes, no tie. A kipper is the one seventies element with nowhere left to go, and without one the collar sits flat on the lapel the way it did then.

Leg and shoe

A flared or bootcut trouser over a boot with a low block heel, or over a chunky sole. The washed bootcut jean at $78 has the shape: close through the thigh, closing again at the knee, opening below it. Plain indigo with orange stitching, and the distressing is the only thing on it that would not have existed in 1974.

Skip the platform. The platform turned into the chunky sole, and the modern version adds the same height.

Waist and layer

A high-waisted trouser, a visible belt, and a cropped layer above it. The 1971 arrangement without modification, and a cropped jacket over a high waist happens to be a current shape too.

What to change from the period version

Width, down about a third

A three-inch lapel where the period ran to five, a modest flare where it ran to a full bell. The proportions still answer each other at the smaller scale.

Fibre, natural

Synthetic sheen is the single thing that reads cheapest now, and the shape never depended on it. Wool, cotton, corduroy, linen and leather all held the same cut in the period.

Colour, from the winter half

Brown, rust, olive, mustard, grey, cream. Those were the everyday seventies palette in any case.

Surface, matte

Satin, lamé and metallic finishes were stage clothing at the time. Texture does the same work: corduroy, a velvet collar, a slubbed wool.

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